


Sukirin

by SadakoTetsuwan



Series: McHanzo Week 2016 [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: But I want to do this right, But not exactly, Day 6, Dragons, Jesse gets a dragon, Kirin, M/M, McHanzo Week, Native American McCree, So much research for such a short story, Ultimate Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 14:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8985499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadakoTetsuwan/pseuds/SadakoTetsuwan
Summary: To everyone's surprise, Hanzo and McCree have been rather subtle newlyweds. A less-than-subtle arrival in the heat of battle, however, shows that McCree has been officially accepted into the Shimada Clan by its guardian dragons.But something isn't quite as anticipated.





	

It was a well-known fact in the clan that only a Shimada could control the dragons. Adoption and marriage were no impediment; the dragons could still deem you worthy.

But the creature which came at Jesse’s call was _not_ a dragon.

It had come like a bolt from the blue, the boom of his pistol splitting the air like thunder, the muzzle flash like lightning. The sound that Hanzo heard was distinctly dragon-like, and before he turned to look, he was half certain one of his own dragons had come to McCree’s aid—it had happened on occasion before. But the whistle and roar and blast of wind was unfamiliar. Hanzo peeked his head out from behind his cover, his eyes widening at the sight.

A cyclone, twisting and turning and tearing their foes from the ground, picking them up and pitching them into the white-painted walls, clearing the path ahead of them, and churning the air above, a creature, almost a dragon—but not quite.

Its fierce gaze burned with the passion of a midsummer sun, its golden antlers glittered and its silken fur shone fiery red, its long serpentine tail whipped and thrashed with the wind, but its ruby scales were much more fish-like than his dragons’, it’s body was powerful and compact, and rather than dagger-like claws, its feet ended in cloven gold hooves, their stamping shaking the air as the twister drove forward.

“C’mon!” McCree hollered over the roar, grasping Hanzo by the sleeve and dragging him into the trail left by the tornado, driven by pure adrenaline. It was madness, of course, to chase a tornado, but in a supreme twist of irony, it was the one safe place to be in Ilios. “Path’s clear! Move yer asses!” he yelled into his comm.

“What the _hell_ is that noise?” Jack growled in reply.

“What the hell is _that_?!” Pharah cried, cutting her jets and falling like a stone—she didn’t want to be in mid-air with a tornado, let alone whatever jinn was controlling it.

“Dunno, but it sounds like our ticket outta here! Vamos!” Lúcio called over the commlink, switching to a thrumming, fast-paced beat. Symmetra was silent—likely horrified by the sudden explosion of chaos and noise—but she dutifully retreated, her eyes focused directly on the path in front of her. It surprised her somewhat; though there was chaos all around, the path of the tornado was scoured clean. A surprising contrast, and one she was happy to cling to.

* * *

McCree didn’t say much as they reviewed the mission debriefing—it was something that Sayta and Fareeha took much greater pleasure in than him. Even Jack seemed a little surprised by their enthusiasm for post-mission analysis and statistics.

“And, finally, what I think we’ve all been waiting for,” Fareeha said, pressing play on the video feed from the outside of the dropship. Though there was no audio, the ferocity of the tornado was still felt, the glowing creature inside it clearly visible at the top of the funnel. All eyes were firmly fixed on the video—all except for McCree.

“Having noted the similarity to their dragons, we have asked both Shimada brothers to examine this footage,” Satya stated, her gaze flicking between Hanzo, who had a neatly arranged stack of pages and folders with precise markers and post-its, and Genji, who had brought nothing to the meeting whatsoever. Perhaps, she thought, Hanzo would present for the both of them.

“It is a Kirin,” Genji stated. Satya waited for him to continue, but after several long moments it became clear to her that he apparently felt there was nothing else to contribute. Hanzo cleared his throat.

“I concur. It is not, strictly speaking, a dragon. This hasn’t happened in the Shimada family for as long as we have recorded the manifestation of our guardians. Though their forms and colors and abilities have always been suited to their humans’ strengths and skills, even among those entering the clan from the outside who have been granted guardians, they have always clearly been dragons.”

“So what is a kirin?” Fareeha asked, pulling a chair out and sitting backwards, tipping it forward until the back rested against the table.

“It is a chimaera,” Genji began, “Half dragon, half horse. They are the embodiment of justice and peace,” he added, a smile evident in his voice as he turned to look down the table at McCree. The cowboy sighed, pulling his hat down slightly.

“It’s Mánkayía,” he corrected, a curl of cigar smoke wending out from beneath the brim of his hat.

“It’s what now?” Lúcio asked, his voice somewhat quiet, given the current atmosphere of the room.

“Mánkayía is the spirit of the storm, maker of tornadoes. It’s a Kiowa spirit. I can’t talk to it, though, I speak Apache,” he added. “To my people an’ the Kiowa, the tornado brings balance, it finds what’s lost an’ brings it back t’ where it belongs. It cleared the path fer us t’ get home, made sure we all got back safe. Powerful medicine,” he added softly.

“I didn't know you were an Indian,” Jack remarked, earning a displeased sound from Satya.

“The term is Native American,” she corrected, unafraid of giving the commander a sour look.

“The term is Apache,” McCree continued, his tone a little softer—it wasn’t the important thing here, after all, and if Satya wanted to pick a fight with Morrison over who was 'Indian' in the room, he wasn’t about to get in her way.

“Could your guardian have been inspired by this spirit to appear as a Kirin?” Hanzo asked, his tone also rather quiet as Satya continued her analysis.

“Might could be. I mean, Mánkayía creates them bit ol’ thunderheads, blots out the whole sky,” McCree mused. “An’ like I said, it only speaks Kiowa—the real Mánkayía wouldn’t come if I called.”

“But a dragon…” Hanzo continued, smiling softly and reaching for McCree’s hand, lightly hanging on to his fingers in an almost delicate gesture, “A dragon will always answer the call of a worthy Shimada.”

“Guess that answers the question about names, don’t it?” McCree smiled, turning his hand and lacing his fingers between Hanzo’s.

“…May I ask your name?” Hanzo asked, allowing the affectionate little motion in spite of their colleagues in the room.

“Hm?”

“Native people often have names in their own languages—the Ainu do,” Hanzo replied. “But for the Ainu, they are secret…so…may I ask your name?” McCree smiled, giving his hand a little squeeze and leaning close.

“Red Horse Stands His Ground,” he murmured into Hanzo’s ear. Hanzo smiled and gently leaned his head against McCree’s, sighing.

“It suits you,” he said, looking back up at the red and gold Kirin on the screen, nostrils flared and hooves raised. “They both suit you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write this for a while, but I've been a bit nervous about it.
> 
> McCree is part Plains Apache (Kiowa Apache) on one side of his family. The Kiowa Apache didn't share a language with their larger sibling nation, the Kiowa, but they did become increasingly culturally associated. (Also, the Plains Apache dialect is currently moribund, which is terribly sad, but there are Apache who are descended from other Eastern Apache tribes (Jicarilla, Mescalero, and Lipan) who were initially forced onto the Plains Apache reservation--so McCree speaks an Apachean language from farther southwest than his tribal affiliation would suggest, and either way, Kiowa is a completely different language family).
> 
> The Apache have many stories about the tornado, and all of them that I have read are benevolent. Tornado is sent by the Great Spirit when creatures like Coyote got lost during the genesis of the world, and when the mountains stopped growing, Tornado was sent to investigate because it could travel unhindered through all kinds of land. (It found two young girls who had tread across the mountains and were picking berries, and it brought them safely back to the tribe.)
> 
> The Kiowa story of Mánkayía (Man-ka-ih, 'Storm-Maker Red Horse') says that the Kiowa made a horse out of red clay, and it came to life and ran away, causing storms with its fury and whipping up tornadoes with its serpentine tail. But because it was made by the Kiowa, it spoke their language, and thus if asked politely in the Kiowa language to spare a place, the tornado will change course. While the tornado is dangerous, it also brings life-giving rain--proper respect in dealings with Mánkayía kept the Great Plains alive.
> 
>   
>   
> _Mánkayía/Man-ka-ih, depending on the source--Kiowa orthography was standardized within the last 25-ish years, so there is documentation and written stories about this spirit under both spellings._  
>  Source: http://understandingthehorse.com/so-when-is-a-horse-not-like-a-tornado/momaday-man-ka-ih/  
> 
> 
> Kirin have draconic bodies and horns but horse-like faces and the cloven hooves of a deer or ox, it's said they walk on clouds to avoid harming even a blade of grass with their steps, and have voices like the wind. They are also guardians of balance and are usually peaceful, but will breathe fire in rage if the innocent are harmed. They have a strong sense of justice, and will only appear in the presence of a just and righteous person. Being blessed with the presence of a Kirin is very lucky for the people it visits.
> 
> The Japanese word for tornado is tatsumaki (竜巻), 'winding/spiraling dragon'--I knew McCree's dragon guardian had to be tornado-related, the indigenous stories of horses and storms among the Great Plains tribes, the intrinsic connection between cowboys and their horses, and the dragon-like-horse-like traits of the justice-sensing kirin all came together to make the absolute perfect Shimada 'dragon' for Jesse McCree-Shimada.


End file.
